Ok, for my first question Flying over the oak tree,the farmer saw the flock of birds that had damaged his crops. I revised to: The farmer saw the flock of birds, flying over the oak tree that had damaged his crops. Second sentence: Ironing out all wrinkles, the pants looked much more presentable. I revisded to: The pants looked much more presentable, ironing out all wrinkles. This was for dangling modifiers Thanks, I am lost on this.
Flying over the oak tree,the farmer saw the flock of birds that had damaged his crops. I revised to: The farmer saw the flock of birds, flying over the oak tree that had damaged his crops.
Your revision now sounds as if the oak tree had damaged his crops! See what you think of this:
The farmer saw the flock of birds that had damaged his crops as they were flying over the oak tree.
Second sentence: Ironing out all wrinkles, the pants looked much more presentable. I revisded to: The pants looked much more presentable, ironing out all wrinkles.
Your revision has the pants ironing out all the wrinkles! Try this: The pants looked much more presentable after he ironed out all the wrinkles.
Or this: The pants looked much more presentable after all the wrinkles had been ironed out.
This was for dangling modifiers Thanks, I am lost on this.
Fixing dangling and squinting and all the other weirdly phrased modifiers is not always easy. Did you go to that webpage I sent you. It does a pretty good job explaining it all, but it still takes lots of reading and practice writing to deal with these things.
One thing to remember is that you want the modifier(s) -- whether a word or two or a phrase or a clause -- to be as close to what it/they are modifying as possible.
Please re-post if you have more questions. This is not an easy topic, I know.
=)